Pipe and Drape: The Theatre For Young Audiences Podcast: Episode 2: Alison Liney

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STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape, the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the theatre for young audiences industry. Every two weeks I sit down with a theatre professional to hear their stories about the audition, rehearsal, and development process of theatre for young audiences. Each of them have bridged the path from youth to adulthood while living in worlds created for children. My guests have mounted shows small enough to fit in a minivan to productions so big they travel by caravan. You can join the conversation by emailing PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com or messaging @PipeAndDrapeStories on Instagram. On Episode 2, my guest shares her stories from running a small pipe and drape style show out to local schools, and how that led her to help create and tour a larger pipe and drape show throughout the United States. Thank you for listening with me today.

S: Today’s guest is dancer/actor/teaching artist Alison Liney. Alison recently worked with Enchantment Theatre Company on stage as the title role in the national tour of Peter Rabbit Tales and as choreographer for the national tour of the Phantom Tollbooth. She was also seen in their Philadelphia production of The Snow Queen and touring has an enchanter within Enchantment Everywhere. She was a member of Philadelphia's MM2: A Modern Dance Company, and currently teaches contemporary and theatre at Bowman Dance Company and School, and choreographs at Haverford High School Drama and Upper Darby Summer Stage, which is where we met. Alison and I danced together on the Upper Darby stage, which is former home two actors Tina Fey, Jeremy Morris of Broadway's Waitress, and Jim Hogan of T.3 TikTok notoriety, and all over the East Coast with the theatre camp’s outreach program Shooting Stars. Today, Alison joins me from her home in Delaware County, Pennsylvania to discuss her work with Peter Rabbit. Alison, welcome.

ALISON LINEY: Thanks, that made me sound really, like I do a lot of stuff. I love that.

S: You do do a lot of stuff. I mean, we're going to get into it. But between dancing the little tiny dances all over the country and teaching the art of theatre and movement, children, you do a lot of things.

A: All in a row like that.

S: And by the way, everyone, she also bakes and arranges flowers, so she can do your whole wedding.

A: Book me! Just kidding.

S: Book her! Book her, and she’ll be the entertainment, too. So recently you've been teaching children, and you previously spent a lot of time performing for children, but when you were a kid, what were the kinds of things you were doing?

A: It’s funny, I started off really outgoing as a kid and then got really shy in middle school. But as a kid kid, I really loved to show off and do tricks and stuff on the playground, because I took gymnastics for a hot second. So I did exactly one cartwheel on the playground and I was like, ‘I'm so talented.’ In middle school, I was very shy, like didn't really do anything. And then once I started doing Summer Stage, kind of towards high school, I started becoming more of who I am now—more outgoing and kind of more show-offy like I was when I was a little kid.

S: Was that your gateway into performing? Had you taken (besides gymnastics)… Were you taking dance classes outside of school as well?

A: Yeah, well, so my sister started dancing. And I saw her in The Nutcracker. She was the Snow Queen. And I was like, ‘I could do that. I'm pretty sure.’ So I was very into that. I didn't really start taking classes until I was, I think, a freshman in high school. So kind of late for most other dancers. But yeah, I saw her do that. And I really, really wanted to do it too, because she was up on point. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And I totally stopped doing gymnastics because I thought…I just fell in love with dance almost immediately when I started. And I was I think kind of shy still on stage. I was told by my teachers that I should smile because I did not smile on stage because I was like really into it and trying to be this intense dancer. I can't remember if it was that same year, that summer, or the next one that I started doing Summer Stage. But I think Summer Stage is the reason why I became a good performer and became a more external performer, were when I had started like doing ballet, I was an internal performer, if that makes any sense. I was really into myself and what I was doing and intensely like…thought I was intensely performing. But then doing Summers Stage you start to… I don't know if it's just the way the theater is built (the way how it's like that three-quarter thing and you can really see everybody) but you start…I felt like I could start acknowledging the audience more and became more of this external performer. And really using my face and using all those qualities that I hadn't been doing from just doing ballet dancing.

S: So just to paint a picture for our listeners: the Upper Darby stage is a three-quarter thrust. So, there are audience members on all three sides of you. And they're fairly close. So you can see all of their faces.

A: I feel like that really made a huge difference. I don't think anybody (most people that I talked to that didn't do Summer Stage or go to Upper Darby), they don't feel that same way that I do. I love seeing the audience, I go crazy for it. I love it. It makes me like…Oh! I just get so intensely excited about it. And when I'm on regular stages where I can't really see people, I mean, obviously I'm going for it still, but I don't have that same fire that I have when I can see them. I really just love that. I love being able to see the audience like really just like…uhn. It gets me going.

S: There’s something about it, especially doing shows for kids because you can see it in their faces and their bodies that they are in it.

A: Yes. Oh my god. It's a great thing ever. It's just so cool as like…and even we've make eye contact with kids and they're so into it and they're so feeling exactly what you're feeling, it just makes it so much more like, ‘I am this tree,’ or whatever. No, I really believe it, because they are, they're so into it.

S: So how did you get from this world where you're a child at sixteen (back when we were doing Seussical, Jr. together) to being an adult still in the world of performing for kids?

A: I never really thought about it, to be honest; you’re the first person ever asked me that. I never really considered being like, ‘Oh, yeah, I should keep performing for kids and working with them because I'm pretty good at it and it's fun.’ I really wanted to be a very successful individual performer after college, but that was very naive and that's just not how things work out for most people. So I was actually contacted by (he eventually became a very good friend of mine), but he was I guess you could call him an adjunct professor. He would come in and he taught a couple of our modern dance classes. But his name's Scott McPheeters; he’s a big-time Enchantment person (or used to be; he's choreographed all their shows), but he reached out to me and was like, ‘Do you want to do…I have this audition coming up, I would love for you to come, I think you'd be perfect for it.’ And I didn't even know what it was, I just went because I was like, ‘Yeah, I want a job. Yeah, I'll do anything.’ When I went there, and they were explaining it, they were like, ‘Yeah, it's this children show.' And I was like, ‘Oh I know how to do that. I got it. I know exactly what this is.’ And then doing that (not to…I don't know, if you want to get into this specific Enchantment Everywhere thing?), it was amazing. It's this really low-key show. It’s exactly what your podcast is called, it’s pipe and drape. It was straight up just two pipes and a curtain [Laughter.] was our set-up, and we started performing for all these really inner-city schools, really low income areas, which was such a (I don't know how to explain it) crazy mess in the best way. Kids are wild in that area, and I mean in the best way because they are very vocal, which is my favorite thing ever. But we started doing those shows and, you know, that is like: there's no lights, so you can see everybody in the audience, which is the best. And these…it’s…a lot of times, like a lot of times these kids’ first time ever really seeing actual people performing and not on TV. A lot of the times they would actually refer to it as “a movie” because we would have a talkback afterwards and they would they would say things like, ‘When you did the movie, how did you do this part?’ Which I thought was… I had the microphone in my hand that point I just think I stared at him for like two minutes. ‘What does he think we just did?’ And then I realized that's the only language that he had to understand what just happened because he's never seen a play before, which is so crazy but so cool the same time—that we're these weird little twenty-two year olds running around in masks performing for these children? I never really thought about becoming a children's theatre performer. But, again, that's really been the biggest chunk of my, of my professional career has been performing for children, which is so funny. I never really put into words like that. But it's great. I think it's the best kind of theatre that there is because it's the only way…it’s the easiest way kids can get into it. There's no other way to really…it’s hard to send a kid who's never seen a play before once they’re sixteen or seventeen years old to get them to go see it or even be a part of it. Like how are you going to do that this is the easiest way to get that in; to get them involved in the arts I think.

S: I've seen a number of the Enchantment shows, and there's masks and puppetry, magic, the whole play has a beautiful score under it. Had you any experience with puppetry or mask work before this?

A: Not even for a second. It's always something I've really…I love puppets. I've always really loved puppetry just as an observer; I think it's really cool and I'm a huge Muppets fan. Masks, I always thought it was like a little weird. I never really knew that people still really did that because it's a really old school form of theatre. But I never had an experience with it. But my friend Scott, who ran the audition (that first audition that I went to), he handed me this pole. It was called a “tree stick” and it just had ribbons of gorgeous fabric that was green and whatever, and it's literally just a pole, straight across, ribbons. And he handed this to me and he was like, ‘Dancers make the best puppeteers, go ahead.’ Like…what does that mean, first of all, and he kind of just showed me what he wanted it to look like and it was just like a couple turns across and you like kind of stop and hold the the tree stick so someone can kind of like peer through it. And I really resisted being sort of dancerly because I wasn't sure…I don't consider myself (or at the time I didn't really consider myself) an actor. I was a dancer. So I didn't really know what they were looking for, so I kind of held back and was like, ‘I don't want to do these pirouettes or something crazy like that,’ and they're gonna be like, ‘Oh, that's a little bit much.’ So I kind of did a kind of walk and did it. And he was like, ‘No, do what you think you should do.’ And I did all these things, and he was like, ‘That's exactly what it was supposed to be.’ And I wasn't really expecting that. It's much more (mask and movement theater), it's much more… I do think I really do think that dancers or at least (what do we say?) “strong movers” make the best puppeteers, because they really…it’s all about your whole body. It's never just your arms, like you think it would be with puppets, like you think you're just gonna go like, you know, hand-in-the-sock-puppet thing. It's the whole body, the whole thing is moving every single part of you is the puppet. And I just…it’s so cool. I would love to just work with puppets forever.

S: So you're within Enchantment Everywhere performing for children and schools. And you're touring shows throughout the Philadelphia area. And then you do some more work with Enchantment, and then you're taking one of their bigger shows out on the road. So what was that process like? Because before you mentioned, you had literal two pipes and a curtain. And then you're taking on bigger show out that still lives in the same world where you're taking classic literature and movement-based pieces to share these stories, but now it's on the road, and you've got bigger pipes, bigger drapes, you're performing in huge theaters: what was that like? What was your day to day with Peter Rabbit across the country?

A: Yes. So we actually..so the first thing I ever did with Enchantment was Enchantment Everywhere. That was in 2014. I think right after….or…2013? No, 2014 after I graduated college, and then that was a short stint. And then I did Snow Queen in the winter right after that. And then during Snow Queen, they had me do something really random by myself in the middle of rehearsal, and all the directors were like, [whispering] ’Ooh yeah maybe,’ and I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ and then the next day, they were like, ‘We really want to offer you like, (you’re still gonna come to audition if you're interested) but we want to offer you the role of Peter Rabbit.’ And I was like, ‘I…yeah,’ but for me everything was always just gonna be Yes, no matter what anybody said to me. If it was a job, it was Yes. [Laughter] It didn’t matter. And I didn't really know what the extent was; they were mentioning it would be a tour or whatever. So that happened, I found out throughout the process that this is going to be a pretty big deal for them. They had the full backing of the Beatrix Potter Foundation, so it was going to be like the Peter Rabbit show, essentially. So there's so many of them, but this is going to be the authorized live-action Peter Rabbit show, which is pretty cool. And I was like, ‘That's a much bigger deal than when they were like, "I think we're gonna offer you Peter Rabbit,” and I was like, “Okay.”’ But it was a pretty crazy process. We rehearsed for a really long time. And in stints. So usually with Enchantment, the first couple weeks (I’ll say maybe three to four, if I can remember correctly) of just figuring out what the show is. So the one artistic director, Jennifer Smith, (she’s the writer of all the shows) she was taking three different shows (or three different books), so she was like tasked with putting them all together and making a cohesive story out of it, essentially. I wouldn't call it an original story, since it’s based on these things (but kind of?) But we did that for about four weeks, and the script is a working script so it's changing all the time. That first process is pretty frustrating, because you don't relate…nothing is ever getting set. It’s changing every single day, no matter how long…so we work for eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, and then every single day it's different. But that's just kind of what happens in theatre sometimes so you get over it. And props are being figured out and how costumes are going to work out. And we only (for traveling purposes), they try to hire like the absolute minimum amount of people. So people end up playing a bunch of different characters. So there's only I think…there’s only six of us in that show playing (I think there was) at least twenty-five characters. So that's the first stint: figuring out how that's gonna work. And then you're off for a couple months while things get built: the masks get made, the costumes get made, the set is being designed and all that stuff. And then you come back for another couple weeks (about the same amount of time) to work with all that stuff. And then you’re off again for a couple weeks or months. And then you come back for all the final stuff. So I would say maybe it's two weeks that you're doing…you have your props, your costumes, your masks are set, the set exists, you're working with that, figuring out how it goes up and goes down. And then getting ready for the show (technical elements, all that stuff) and then you have your invited dress and show it to people. But it’s a full time job. That's what people don't really…I think a lot of people forget about that with theatre jobs. It was…that's what I did. I worked my other jobs. I was waitressing at the time; people were like, ‘Oh, what's your real job?’ and I was like, ‘It is a real job, first of all. Both of my jobs are real jobs. But I work Monday through Friday, nine to five.’ And it's a long day. It's grueling. It's crazy. The last two days, I would say were the craziest, because we really didn't have that much time with the actual set and us figuring out how it works. Because we just had to figure out the tech (like the lights and the sound and stuff together.) I would say that we only broke down the set one time before we left for the road. And the first time, I think that the six (or the seven of us with the technical director) put it up together was our first day at our first stop for our first show.

S: I’ve seen the show multiple times in different theaters. And this set…it’s massive, and it's beautiful. How long did it take you to load in the multiple prosceniums, backdrops and all the lights that you traveled with?

A: That show was huge. It was it was the back panel, there was a middle wing with I think two flaps, and then the front part, and it was gorgeous. It was hand painted and then printed, it was very beautiful. And it looked just like a Beatrix Potter book. But to put it all up and down? Geez.. Well, the first couple times we were really bad at it. And then we finally figured out how to do it. It probably took…I would say on a good day, it probably took like an hour and a half to put up and take down. I think when we were first figuring it out probably took double that because there are so many elements have to go up. It’s…you have your like (I’m not really sure what the technical terms for these things are), but these big metal plates that the pipes screw into, which are very heavy. You have to attach the top, the actual structure of it. So two pipes on each side, plus the one that is on the top that the drapes hang on. And they're really heavy, everything is so heavy. And we're just these six, little weak theatre people [Laughter.] trying to lift it up. I mean, we did it, but it was hard. Like it's really crazy how hard it is. Some days, we were doing it twice a day: putting it up and down, leaving, putting it up and down. Yeah, the goal was to get the show as many times, you know what I mean? So, there'll be days where you wake up at five, do your load in (which is where you put everything up, do the lights and all that stuff), and then you perform and then you immediately take it down. You take a five minute break; you immediately strike everything, load it back in the van, and then you’re off to the next place, get there by like seven, load in, and then leave and go and sleep for a little bit. [Laughter.]

S: That sounds exhausting.

A: It was very, very draining.

S: What was the housing situation when you were on the road with the show? How was that set up?

A: So we were kind of rogue with ours. We had two managers (which were of the cast), one was in charge of internal (so, finding the hotels), and then the other one sort of dealt with the venues. The one manager decided to do Expedia. He would essentially look at the tour map, see what the town that we're going to next, and you can do this thing where you can make a general area of where you want to go and then it will find you the best deal. We had a pretty strict budget too because the company is technically a nonprofit, so there wasn't really that much cashflow for hotels and stuff. So we were not staying at the Marriott, we were staying at the Red Roof. As long as it doesn't have bedbugs or a murderer I'm good.

S: It’s wild in the Midwest. What are some fun things that you encountered when you were on the road?

A: Well, my one favorite story that I tell a lot of people (because it's very short; it makes me laugh still): we were in Ohio, I was driving, or no I think I was a passenger (like The Navigator we call the front passenger person) and my driver brakes really hard and I'm like, ‘What the…what?’ And I'm all freaked out because all our crap is in the back of the van and we drive a fifteen passenger van for the people and our stuff. She does not make stops easily, she’s got a lot of junk in her trunk. So it does not stop very fast. But she's slamming on the brakes. And I'm like, ‘What the hell?’ (Excuse me.) There was a literal chicken crossing the road. And that was probably one of my favorite things that ever happened. [Laughter.] And she took her time she was like,

‘Hey.’

[Laughter.] But that's just one of the many things that you'll see. Also, seeing actual tumbleweeds was one of my favorite things too…so funny. I didn't think that was real, but it is, and it's really good. [Pennsylvania laughter.] We all had the windows down being like, ‘WoAh!’ There's so many things I wish I could have done now that I've been on tour, I wish I had done a little bit differently. I wish that I had really talked to more people in the town. We really, I guess we don't really have that much time though. I tried to go sightseeing as much as possible, but I would say for my tour at least (the first year that Peter Rabbit went out), we did not go to very many places that had sights to see I'll say. [Laughter.] There was no like giant yarn ball or like rubber band ball, there was no…we didn't really see any stuff like that, it was mostly just like very tiny towns. So many tiny towns.

S: You have this magical, illustrated experience, and you've gone on to do all sorts of wonderful things: more performances, more work with this company where you were able to choreograph as well, and you have continued to choreograph and inspire children as a teaching artist. How have you found that this experience of traveling, putting up your own set, learning to drive so you can drive the set…how has this had an impact on your life and your bridge from being a college student to a full blown adult?

A: Yeah, you know what’s funny? I actually (right before we started this conversation), I was just thinking: I really think about being on tour almost every day. One of my students at Haverford once made fun of me because apparently I talked about it a lot. She was like, ‘Oh, you always say like, ‘When I was on tour,”’ and I was like, ‘I don't think it sounds cool. It's just like such a weirdly huge part of my life, even though it only lasted for a year.’ It’s hard not to think about it all the time. And not even just good or bad, just like random things will just make me think of it. Like especially: I learned I learned how to drive for this tour. So almost every single time I do something in the car I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember when I did that on tour,’ [Laughter.] and random stuff like that. I think that I've always been a pretty good hustler, and I don't mean hustler like my “side hustle,” I mean literally walking fast. Like moving fast. I've always been pretty self-motivated, and I think that that's something…like my current job that I'm at now (it’s not a theatre job, unfortunately) but I was already promoted once within nine months because of work ethic and all that stuff. And I really don't need to be told what to do from other people, I just will find something, I'll do it. I've always sort of been that way. But I think that that experience really made me realize how important and sort of special of a quality that is. I learned how to do stuff for myself. Like it makes you…It’s weird, because you're with the same seven people for so long. But you really end up like relying on yourself for so many things. We all had our specific jobs that we did it for load-in and whatever and I wouldn't believe wait for anybody else start their’s; I would just do my own thing, whatever, get all my stuff done. I think that's really helped impress my current employers and any future employers. I think that’s a really special quality that I think a lot of theatre people really have in general because we just have to keep working. We always (and I don't mean that in a sad way because it sounds kind of depressing), but we always want to be moving and keep going and never sit still, essentially.

S: Alison, thank you for sitting and speaking with me today. How can our listeners reach out to you and see more of your work?

A: My Twitter is mostly Bachelor memes so if you love a good Bachelor/Bachelorette meme follow me there. I am @guyisonahorse (all one word) and the same for Instagram: mostly pictures of cakes. I post dance videos there sometimes. I started like a thing on Peter Rabbit tour where I did “dance where you can,” so sometimes in random locations like gardens or outside or in random little pockets of space.

S: Be sure to check out Alison’s profile to see where her pipe and drape story has taken her.

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You can join the conversation about theatre for young audiences and find more Pipe and Drape content including photos, quotes, and TYA news on Instagram @PipeAndDrapeStories. And please be sure to rate and review Pipe and Drape wherever you listen to podcasts! Each star given or review submitted helps future listeners to find the show. Be sure to tune in every other Tuesday to hear theatre for young audiences creatives share their pipe and drape stories. Pipe and Drape is created and hosted by Stephen Fala and distributed by Anchor. Artwork for Pipe and Drape was created by Stephen Gordon and music was composed by Stephen Fala. Thank you for listening with me today.